3. Into the surreal

After the scan it was a case of letting friends and family know. The reactions were that of disbelief. My wife was clearly not on the same plane as me as far as our situation went. I couldn’t stop laughing and she couldn’t stop shaking. It was just surreal. I’ve had some seriously mind altering experiences during my days on drugs, but this was way out there. you get the point, it was insane.

I think it was about three days before she left the bedroom. there was no question that she was going reduce. It was incredibly hard for me during those early days. As her husband I had to respect her final wishes on the pregnancy, after all the risk was to her and the babies, Frankie had already lost her Dad. But the thought of removing one of those heartbeats was tearing me up. I didn’t believe for one minute that this would have happened unless we had what it took to deal with it, as I said before, I saw three gifts.

the following monday we went to the hospital to get the ball rolling for the reduction, luckily non of the midwives were there to see us , nor was our consultant. My wife was even more stressed when we left, I felt a little relief, like we’d bought some time.

My worry was that the decision to reduce was solely based on fear, that one day she would look back and regret it. I didn’t resent her for feeling the way she did at all, it was awful to see her suffering at a time that should have been filled with joy. It was anything but a normal situation. It would be a couple of months before I was even free to refer to them as the triplets.

She held off the reduction, partly due to the family’s reaction to what all were referring to as miracles, and maybe the pressure from me , as bad as I felt for wanting them. Our scans were split fortnightly between our local hospital, and the city hospital which dealt with specialist pregnancies like ours.

The next big appointment was the city hospital. It was explained that they would lean heavy on reducing as the safest option so to be prepared.

In the meantime I went to work, Stacey carried on working, we read and researched all we could about triplets, especially the set up Stacey had baking. It really was like a lottery win. She remained stressed and agitated , and I did my best to stay positive for her and Frankie. It was tough.